Nigerians have been handed something to cheer over the harsh economy as the consumer price index (CPI), which measures the rate of change in prices of goods and services, dropped to 21.34 percent in December 2022, down from 21.47 percent in the month of November.
This much was confirmed on Monday by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) in its latest consumer price index (CPI) report.
According to the report, the inflation rate on a month-on-month basis has decreased, the first time the inflation rate is going down in the last eleven months.
Despite this, inflation is still high when compared to December 2021, when the rate stood at 15.63 percent before easing to 15.60 percent in January 2022.
The body said the inflation rate of December 2022 portrayed a decline of 0.13 percent when juxtaposed to the figure of November 2022.
“However, on a year-on-year basis, the headline inflation rate was 5.72 percent points higher compared to the rate recorded in December 2021, which was (15.63 percent). This shows that the headline inflation rate increased in the month of December 2022 when compared to the same month in the preceding year (i.e., December 2021),” the report reads.
“On a month-on-month basis, the percentage change in the ‘all items index’ in December 2022 was 1.71 percent, which was 0.32 percent higher than the rate recorded in November 2022 (1.39 percent). This means that in the month of December 2022, the general price level was 0.32 percent higher relative to November 2022.
“The percentage change in the average CPI for the twelve months ending December 2022 over the average of the CPI for the previous twelve months period was 18.85 percent, showing 1.89 percent increase compared to the 16.95 percent recorded in December 2021.”
